Forum How do I...?

Bleed on inside/outside edges

arthurattwell
Is it possible to specify different bleed for inside or outside page edges?

Some printers (e.g. Lightning Source) require trim but no bleed on inside edges.

I can specify top-right-bottom-left, e.g.:

prince-bleed: 3mm 3mm 3mm 0;

but I need something like:

prince-bleed-inside: 0;

Or I need to figure out a workaround. Any suggestions?
mikeday
You could use different bleed settings for @page:left and @page:right.
arthurattwell
Thanks, Mike. That gets me most of the way there.

I had to add a couple of tricks:

* Unless I'm doing something wrong, crop marks on the inside edges extend right to the edge of the page, so they might show on the final printed page if the physical trimming is inaccurate. Luckily, Lightning Source doesn't want crop marks, so I can use `marks-none` to remove them completely.

* I have full-page images that bleed into the margin areas. These still bleed into the trim area even when prince-bleed is zero. So I have to obscure them with @left and @right margin boxes.

This is my final Lightning-Source page-setup CSS, which does the trick for me:

/* Page setup for Lightning Source colour pages
 * Removes bleed on inside edges
 * Adjusts trim accordingly
 * Removes crop marks as required by LS
 * Uses the @left and @right margin boxes to obscure elements (e.g. full-bleed images)
 * that otherwise bleed into the margin area.
 * YMMV
 */

@page:left { 
    prince-bleed: 3mm 0 3mm 3mm !important;
    prince-trim: 0 3mm 0 0 !important;
    marks: none !important;
    @right {
        background-color: white;
        content: " ";
    }
}
@page:right { 
    prince-bleed: 3mm 3mm 3mm 0 !important;
    prince-trim: 0 0 0 3mm !important;
    marks: none !important;
    @left {
        background-color: white;
        content: " ";
    }
}



I should note that LS also requires PDF/X-1a:2001 or PDF/X-3:2002, which I handle separately in Acrobat. (When I last looked these weren't available in --pdf-profile.)
mikeday
PDF/X-3:2003 is a supported profile, we will need to check what is the difference between that and 2002. :)
mikeday
The latest build of Prince now supports PDF/X-3:2002 as well.
arthurattwell
Fantastic, thanks!
melusina
Why did you add trim to inner margin of page. My understanding of LS guidelines is that no space at all should be added to the inner side of a page. So at the moment my configuration ist just the `prince-bleed` that you specified but without the `prince-trim`. I have not submitted it to LS so I wonder if I my have misinterpreted the guidelines?
arthurattwell
@melusina, I'm sorry that I can't remember why I made that decision, and don't have copies of books printed this way with me to check. If you or I do find a way to confirm what's best, hopefully we can post that here for our future selves and others.
melusina
I will do so. Thanks anyway for responding.